W. Ross Ashby on Nature
Browse 2 quotations attributed to W. Ross Ashby, catalogued under nature, with dates where available.
This page displays 2 quotations attributed to W. Ross Ashby and filed under "nature" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to W. Ross Ashby, entry #64803: "By a state of a system is meant any well-defined condition or property that can be recognised if it occurs again. Every system will naturally have many possible states."
Attributed to W. Ross Ashby, entry #195139: "The most fundamental concept in cybernetics is that of "difference", either that two things are recognisably different or that one thing has changed with time. Its range of applic…"
2 Quotes by W. Ross Ashby on Nature
"By a state of a system is meant any well-defined condition or property that can be recognised if it occurs again. Every system will naturally have many possible states."
"The most fundamental concept in cybernetics is that of "difference", either that two things are recognisably different or that one thing has changed with time. Its range of application need not be described now, for the subsequent chapters will illustrate the range abundantly. All the changes that may occur with time are naturally included, for when plants grow and planets age and machines move some change from one state to another is implicit. So our first task will be to develop this concept of "change", not only making it more precise but making it richer, converting it to a form that experience has shown to be necessary if significant developments are to be made."